This blog on Texas education contains posts on accountability, testing, college readiness, dropouts, bilingual education, immigration, school finance, race, class, and gender issues with additional focus at the national level.

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Thursday, February 26, 2015

Bill would ease testing requirements for Texas high school seniors

Senate Bill 149 is good policy. Spoke with my dear friend in the struggle, State Representative Dora Olivo,​ this evening. We reminisced on how the legislation that we worked on more than a decade ago similarly attempted to accomplish what Seliger's SB 149 is currently trying to accomplish right now. We, too, advocated for the institutionalizing of a grade placement committee at the exit level so that youth could get evaluated holistically rather than on a single test with arbitrary cut off scores and limits in terms of what it could actually reveal and say about students' learning. It feels good to be vindicated. :-)

On the subject of accountability, our whole system needs re-vamping. Check out this policy brief authored by our Education Policy and Planning doctoral students and me as part of the Texas Center for Education Policy (TCEP) Graduate Seminar that specifies alternatives available to our state here. My next post elaborates on this further.-Angela

Amid
an ongoing backlash against high-stakes testing, Texas high school
seniors facing new graduation requirements might get the chance to walk
the stage this spring despite failing one or more required state exams.

State Sen. Kel Seliger’s Senate Bill 149
would allow thousands of high school seniors who have failed one or
more of five end-of-course tests more than once to receive their
diplomas anyway as long as a special panel — made up of their parents,
principals, counselors and teachers — unanimously determines they should
be able to. The students still would have to pass all their classes and
maintain a 2.0 grade point average.

Legislation by state Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, would ease high school graduation testing requirements.

The Amarillo Republican said Thursday the legislation is urgently
needed given the sheer number of high school seniors who are at risk of
not graduating this May because they have failed one of the State of
Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, exams that now are
required for graduation, warning that if they do not get their diplomas
they’ll likely drop out.

“Without a high school diploma, these
students cannot attend college, join the military or qualify for many
jobs,” Seliger said at the beginning of the Senate Education Committee’s
first meeting of the legislative session as the panel heard public
testimony on his bill.

With the onset last year of the more
difficult end-of-course exams, more than 28,100 current high school
seniors — about 10 percent — have failed at least one test, according to
the Texas Education Agency. That compares with about 9,000 seniors who
didn’t receive diplomas last year because they failed the easier Texas
Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test.

The class of 2015 has one final chance to pass exams in May — the same month graduates will walk the stage.

Emphasizing
the urgency, Seliger informed the committee Thursday he intends to try
to circumvent a ban on considering legislation within the first 60 days
of a legislative session so his bill could take effect as soon as
possible. That would require a four-fifths majority vote in both
chambers of the Legislature.

After the hearing, Seliger expressed strong confidence that his bill would clear that rarely attempted high bar.

And the committee seemed mostly to support the measure Thursday, while educators gave it a ringing endorsement.

However,
Seliger also faced tough questions from some Republican committee
members, while receiving praise from nearly every Democrat.

Republican
Sens. Donna Campbell and Lois Kolkhorst both cast doubt on the measure
with Campbell of New Braunfels asking whether the legislation would
create a “disincentive” for students to not perform well on the exams
and Kolkhorst of Brenham questioning the need for the tests at all if
students can simply bypass them.

Seliger’s effort comes two years
after state lawmakers unanimously voted to reduce the number of required
state tests from 15 to five, responding to similar fears about the
impact on graduation rates. By law, students now must pass five
end-of-course exams to graduate: English I, English II, Biology, U.S.
History and Algebra I. The tests are administered three times a year.

Those
who testified in favor of Seliger’s bill Thursday expressed a lack of
confidence in the ability of the new STAAR exams — or exams in general —
to adequately determine whether a student should be able to graduate.

Elgin
school district Superintendent Jodi Duron, who thanked Seliger for his
bill, said the new testing system “was poorly executed from its
inception.” Most of the 40 seniors at Elgin High School who are at risk
of not graduating likely would receive diplomas if the legislation
passes, Duran said.
Officials from other Austin-area school
districts, including Pflugerville and Hays, told the American-Statesman
they also support the legislation.

Wanda Bamberg, superintendent
of the Houston-area Aldine school district, estimated that at least 300
of the 390 seniors in her district who still need to pass an exam would
graduate if the measure becomes law, although she suggested it should be
a temporary program — applicable only to current seniors for whom
graduation requirements have changed “mid-stream” to provide an
adjustment period. She also gave several examples of students, including
one who had been accepted to Prairie View A&M University, who won’t
graduate if they don’t pass the May exam.

The influential
Austin-based group Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment —
often credited for single-handedly getting the 2013 legislation passed
that reduced the number of state exams — also testified in favor of the
legislation, with President Dineen Majcher saying “the issues
encompassed by SB 149 are critical priority issues to” the group.

Business
groups, however, including the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce and
the powerful Texas Association of Business, told the committee the
bill’s mechanism isn’t the best way to accomplish its intended goal.

Drew
Scheberle, the Austin chamber’s senior vice president for education,
suggested that the so-called “graduation committees” the bill would
create would inevitably end up approving students for graduation even
when they haven’t earned it.

Asked about that criticism, Seliger
told the Statesman that “if there’s a bias, there’s a bias toward
educators,” emphasizing that the panels would have to reach unanimous
consensus for the student to graduate.

The bill was left pending
at the end of the hearing rather than being put to a vote, but committee
Chairman Larry Taylor said he intends to fast-track it to the Senate
floor.

“It’s heart-wrenching, and it’s also insanity when you see
the level of achievement these kids are already doing, and yet they
can’t even pass this test,” the Friendswood Republican said during the
hearing.